Fitness, finances and freedom in the 21st Century

Main menu

Post navigation

Daily principles

Bunk explains in the Wire that “A man must have a code” (google it if you need to) and I want to share mine. I find having a set of principles held in my mind helps me to prioritise them over the other seemingly urgent stuff that comes into our everyday lives. I should emphasise that they are not fixed. They are just my current principles, I am open to adding, changing, updating, and discarding these. I should also note that I’m by no means perfect. I certainly don’t manage to stick to all of these everyday. But these are the principles that I try to adhere to on a daily basis: –

Use my brain – I try to do something that exercises my mind every day whether it’s reading, creative writing, language learning or whatever.

Sleep well – I aim for a minimum of 8 hours sleep a night.

Get plenty of sunlight – During the spring, summer and autumn I aim to see at least 30 minutes of direct sunlight, outdoors each day.

Single task – I deliberately try to avoid multi-tasking as it makes life much more hectic and stressful and ends up with me doing several tasks badly rather than giving my full attention and doing one task well. Further reading here – Zen Habits – How not to multitask

Follow the “Low Information Diet” – I feel that we’re constantly bombarded with news-tainment and other rubbish that actually has no bearing on our lives but is competing for our attention. I try to eliminate information that has no immediate bearing on me personally from my life. At the end of the day the media only exists to sell advertising and I’m not buying it. Mr Money Mustache explains more in his own indomitable way here – http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/10/01/the-low-information-diet/

Use Parkinsons Law – “Work expands to fill the time available for it’s completion”. So I set myself short deadlines to do stuff to prevent inertia and procrastination. Parkinsons Law

Propose – Rather than being a passive person I try to propose ideas, solutions, options etc. “Some action is better than inaction”.

Use information immediately. I try not to waste time searching information for the sake of it and instead focus only on that which is relevant.

Batch tasks. I aim not to waste time switching between tasks by saving things up to when several similar tasks can all be efficiently completed together..

Cook – I try to ensure that I cook my own meals as much as possible. Firstly because it saves money, secondly because it means that I’m in control of eating healthily and thirdly because it’s a handy skill to have instead of sitting on the sofa waiting for a ready meal to cook.

Meditate – By this I don’t necessarily mean a formal meditation practice. Just five minutes to stop and take a pause to breathe and take a break from all the thoughts whirring round in my head.

Mobilise – This means a minimum of a short walk and preferably some proper exercise and work on my all round joint mobility. Joint Mobility

Cold shower. Make the shower as cold as I can stand it! Purported benefits include boosting the immune system, circulation, mental health (you become “tougher”), and in addition it saves energy, doesn’t create steam in the bathroom and results in taking shorter showers!